What Your CEO Is Reading: Malware’s Black Market; Yuan Rising

News Editor

Every week, CIO Journal offers a glimpse into the mind of the CEO, whose view of technology is shaped by stories in management journals, general interest magazines and, of course, in-flight publications.

Stephen Morton/Bloomberg News

Analysts work in the Security Operations Center at the Dell SecureWorks office in Myrtle Beach, S.C.

Welcome to the malware-industrial complex.MIT Technology Review’s Tom Simonite reports on the rise of an international black market for “zero-day” bugs, vulnerabilities that hackers can use to sneak malicious software onto computer systems. “On the one hand the government is freaking out about cyber-security, and on the other the U.S. is participating in a global market in vulnerabilities and pushing up the prices,” a technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union tells Simonite. As prices rise, the programmers who find such vulnerabilities are increasingly ignoring bounties offered by Google and other software makers in favor of selling their knowledge to the highest bidder. The influx of public money into cyberdefense will only make everything worse, writes Simonite. “And an escalating cycle of competition between U.S and overseas government agencies and contractors could make the world more dangerous for computer users everywhere.”

Cashing in on the yuan. “Little by little, China’s currency is gaining ground,” writes the Economist. The yuan now accounts for 15% of the world’s money supply—not bad considering that until mid-2009 almost all of it was sealed within China’s borders—and in Q4, trade settled with the yuan hit $145 billion. The yuan, which ranks 14th in international payments, still has a ways to go–government capital controls and a need for serious bank reform limit its reach. But businesses are catching on to the fact that using the yuan helps them avoid costs associated with the foreign-exchange regulations applied to dollar-based transactions. Any reluctance by Western firms in adopting a foreign currency is almost becoming moot, says the Economist, as the West accounts for a falling share of China’s trade. “Firms in emerging economies, accustomed to other people’s currencies, may be quicker to adopt the yuan than Western rivals wedded to the dollar, euro or pound.”

Lessons from the software industry. From helping design new products to facilitating new forms of collaboration, software plays an increasing role in a company’s performance. In light of that success, executives could find benefits in applying software industry business models to their own organizations. Business leaders must realize that “almost every company is becoming a software company,” write McKinsey Quarterly’s Hugo Sarrazin and Johnson Sikes. “A base level of software fluency will be a requirement for all levels, including upper management, in order to understand not only the core technologies but also the dynamics of working in a quick-turn, massively more connected, and digitized marketplace, in which economic value is driven increasingly by information-based services.”

Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited's fourth annual Millennial Survey reveals the business activities and outcomes members of Generation Y would prioritize if they held leadership positions. In highlighting millennials' priorities, the survey results draw attention to this generation's values and the themes large enterprises should speak to if they wish to attract and retain members of this rising workforce.